Thursday, December 21, 2006

A Christmas Story

Down at the end of our street, the last house on the left lives an elderly couple. Mr. and Mrs. Anthony C. Tony is always nice and soft spoken. However, the Mrs is a bitch. The few times I have spoken to her she has always been rude and snappy, but generally when I speak at the grocery store or someplace she looks the other way. I think she must have me confused with Bob across the street, or she considers us the cut from the same tools or something.

Their address is 2258 CXXXX Drive. Our address is 2285 CXXXX Drive. On occasions a postal carrier with their digits confused delivered us their mail. I always carry it to them so their mail won’t be delayed – which when I deliver it, she snaps it out of my hand without a “thank you”. She, on the other hand, if she receives our mail, takes it back to the post office and complains about the carrier – which delays our mail. And what good does complaining do? Human still make errors, that is the human factor, which the Postal Service considers a 5% error ratio acceptable.

So, the only good she does is get to delay my mail a day or two.

Yesterday I heard a big rumble and looked out the window and there was a big Federal Express truck back backing up in our driveway, down to our house. I ran out to see what this was about and the driver unloaded two big Dell Computer boxes.

I asked the driver, “Are you sure this goes here?”“You are 2285 Cxxxx Drive aren’t you?”“Yes….”.

I bent over to look at the label to see for myself and saw it was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Anthony C. I told the driver that the numbers were crossed. It was suppose to be 2258 instead of 2285 – the last house on the left.

He asked was I sure and I said yeah, I recognized their name.

I could have delayed them getting their new computer a few days by accepting the packages, then after the driver was out of sight, calling Federal Express saying this didn’t belong to us, and they would send somebody out in a day or so to reclaim it, then get back with the Dell Company to have them research the order, or they could return the computer to Dell and let them figure it out for themselves.